Professor Shrinivas Kulkarni, an acclaimed Indian-American astronomer, has been honored with the prestigious 2026 Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) Gold Medal. This esteemed award recognizes his "field-defining" discoveries and "sustained, innovative, and ground-breaking contributions" to time-domain astronomy, a field dedicated to studying celestial objects that change, blink, or explode over short periods. The RAS Gold Medal, awarded annually since 1824, is considered one of the highest honors in the field of astronomy and geophysics. By receiving this award, Kulkarni joins an exclusive circle of scientific giants, including Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Edwin Hubble, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Kulkarni, originally from Maharashtra, India, is the George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). His significant contributions to astronomy include the discovery of brown dwarfs, the first millisecond pulsar (PSR B1937+21) as a graduate student, and demonstrating that powerful gamma-ray bursts originate outside our galaxy. He also led major projects such as the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and its successor, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), which have revolutionized the study of cosmic events in real-time. Kulkarni also recently received the 2024 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, further highlighting his impactful career. The award ceremony for the 2026 RAS Gold Medal took place on January 9, 2026. Kulkarni expressed surprise and gratitude upon receiving the news, thanking his collaborators and the engineering teams involved in the PTF and ZTF projects. His work has fundamentally reshaped the understanding of the night sky, transforming it from a static map into a dynamic, ever-changing landscape of cosmic events.